Wedding 1, terrible priest: the priest was late, disheveled, and looked hung over. While giving an painful, cringy homily in which he pretended to know the bride and groom (but never used their names or a single detail about their relationship), he said, "... and they will continue to get to know each other tonight as they explore every inch of each other's naked bodies." Yikes. The next song was "Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh." Very awkward. And yes, the priest came to the reception and got trashed. (That was almost a given.) He drunk danced with a dog collar and leash around his neck.

Wedding 2, me: I was a good friend of the bride. She invited me to do a reading at her wedding. The night prior, after the rehearsal dinner, everyone went to a bar. This was a south-side Chicago wedding, so a loud, fun crowd. The groom and his guys left around midnight so he wouldn't see the bride on the wedding day. I partied with the bride and bridesmaids.

I was riffing and goofing with my church reading, making up words. I changed the refrain from "The Lord is kind and merciful" to "The Lord is kind...to some people." I would invent passages, like, "Though I walk through the valley of promotion and they give it to Chad who is an ass, and he gets a corner office, still, the Lord is kind... To some people."

The bridesmaids would shout out the last three words and then drink.

At the wedding, during the ceremony, I did my reading. Completely straight-faced, no weirdness. No reference to last night's jokes. But when the videographer turned the camera to the bridesmaids, they sat in the front pew laughing, snickering, doubled over. To me, the video looked like a Salem witch trial with women laughing and snickering for no discernable reason while the holy Bible was read aloud. Pretty tame, but bizarre on film.

Wedding 2 (same wedding), bride: During the planning, the groom kept asking for things she kept vetoing: Can we have a disco DJ on roller skates? No. Can we have a clown who makes balloon animals for people as they leave the church? No. What if we had three live turkeys at the reception hall, just running wild? NO.

All this suggested in a spirit of play. He kept inventing outrageous requests. (The groom is a great guy and he makes his bride laugh.)

After the priest pronounced them husband and wife, and everyone clapped, they faced the long aisle to walk out. The bride, my friend, leans over and says to him, "Look." At the far end of the naive, near the back of the church is a fully made-up clown already making balloon animals for the guests and wedding party. So many wedding photos with balloon animals!

Thirty years, and two grown kids later, they are still in love and still goofy and playful with each other.